Laminated ceramic capacitors, a major application of the present invention, are commonly produced as follows.
First, ceramic green sheets containing a dielectric ceramic raw material are prepared which have, on their surfaces, a conductive material provided in a desired pattern to serve as an internal electrode layer.
Next, multiple ceramic green sheets including the ceramic green sheets to which the conductive material is provided are stacked and subjected to thermocompression bonding, thereby producing an integrated raw laminate.
Next, a sintered laminate is obtained by firing the raw laminate. Inside this laminate, internal electrode layers are formed which are composed of the conductive material described above.
Then, external electrodes are formed on the outer surface of the laminate so as to be electrically connected to specific ones of the internal electrode layers. The external electrodes are formed, for example, by providing a conductive paste containing conductive metal powder and glass frit onto the outer surface of the laminate and firing the conductive paste. In this way, a laminated ceramic capacitor is completed.
In recent years, with miniaturization and higher performance devices, a reduction in size and an increase in capacitance have been also required for laminated ceramic capacitors. For this purpose, it is effective to reduce the thickness of the dielectric ceramic layer. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-136046 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1) discloses a laminated ceramic capacitor of the thin-layer type including a dielectric ceramic layer with a thickness of 2 μm or less.